Crafts with Paper Plates and Cups for Toddlers/Pre-schoolers

Everything was quite when I came downstairs at 7 AM today. Megha and Anand were still asleep. I made some coffee for myself and sat down in the quite. While sipping coffee I pondered what Megha might like to do this Saturday morning. A craft! She loves crafts. I started thinking what new things I can make with the material I have at home. Immediately I decided that we would be playing with paper plates and cups! That's it! simple and easy.

After breakfast where she surprised me with a little new song, we sat down and made crafts :) 

Materials used: 

Paper Plates

Paper cups

Marker

Cello Tape

Elastic band

Toddler safe water colors

Plastic forks

Craft 1: 

I was absolutely blown away with Megha's creativity. The original plan was to make a basket out of a paper cup. Just took some elastic and stuck it around the paper cup to make a little basket. Megha held the cup and then the elastic band while I applied the tape. Ta da! There's the little basket! She was playing with it and I went to check in on the potatoes that I was baking. And when I turned around, the little basket had magically turned into a party hat! How cool is that?!!!! My awesome, creative baby!

Give your child the means and freedom to explore and they will surprise you and thrive in the new found avenue. 

Craft 2:

A simple humpty dumpty using tape, 2 paper cups and marker. Megha helped me with this as well. We used 2 plastic forks to make hands and there is our little toy :) I dont think she really likes this toy much. She only played with it for about 1 minute. But thats OK...she doesnt have to like everything that we make. 

Craft 3: 

A little Picasso in the making? I sure think so (a mom's opinion)!!! I opened some toddler safe water colors and gave her a couple of paper plates and a cup. She was at this painting for at least 30 minutes! She kept saying the color names out loud when dipping her tiny little fingers into the colors. She kept asking me to look at her painting and when I told her she is doing an awesome job, she seems to like the compliment.
We are not aiming for perfection and we are not aiming to make anything out of it. We are just aiming to have fun with colors. What a great day for a great art :)
Here is plate 1:

Here is the paper cup:

Here is the final piece. By then so many colors were mixed that t had become black/deep blue.

After our beautiful 1 and half hours of craft time, I wiped out the table with lysol wet-wipes and I gave her a bubble bath, her favorite :)

Making up Rhymes!

Saturday, 26th July 2014. Megha woke up around 7 AM, well rested and happy. By then I had already had my coffee and so, I was all ready to start the weekend with my lil girl. I had a couple of surprises today which reinforces that given an avenue to express themselves, kids thrive with creativity.

As is our weekend tradition, Megha was sitting on the kitchen counter while I was making her breakfast (Scrambled Egg and Cheese). She helped with mixing the eggs for them to be scrambled. I started singing a rhyme for her, "Mary Mary Quite Contrary...."

and then Megha jumped in to sing a song for me.

"Sherry Sherry Quite Contrary
How does your babies grow?
With Milk and Cheese and lots of play
And Belle Bella Bella"

Sherry is her daycare provider and Bella is their little dog :) How cute is that?!

Brush my hair!!

Megha never really liked it when I brush her hair. It's not a recent phenomenon, since she was a baby, she never really liked it. In those infant days, I had those soft feather like brushes which protects the tender skull/ head. This evening too I was running into the same old problem of she fussing when I try to brush her hair after shower. So, I let her brush my hair when I was drying her hair! She loved it! I loved to have my hair brushed too! She did a great job :) awesome for her first time :)

Will have to do this more often :)

Strawberry Picking 2014

I had been meaning to update this particular post for the longest time now. We went to strawberry picking on Saturday, 21st June. It was a beautiful day outside and there was no reason to sit at home while we can go outside and have fun! Moreover, Anand was working, so there really was no reason to stay home.

Here she is! Appu says she looks like a Diva already and I do agree :); She is ready with her basket (it was a basket from our Easter Egg collection kit).

We went to a nearby farm called Andrew's Scenic Acres. I thought it was going to be like apple picking fields with not much walking to do. But boy-oh-boy the farm was BIG.

Here she is leading the way, as usual. She loves to run around and go ahead.

At the entrance itself I had asked the lady if the strawberry patch is nearby or if its better if I wait for the shuttle-tractor which takes us there. She told me, "its just 2 mins walk".

It was NOT 2 mins walk! It was more like 10 blocks of walk! How did I know it was that long? Because Megha wanted me to pick her up after walking for (quite literally) 2 minutes; and needless to say, it felt longer as I had her on my hip. Lol

But thats OK, we still had fun. Here she is picking up the strawberries. She did a good job of picking the ripe one's; thanks to a particular episode in Special Agent Oso.

By the time we were done, we had a basket full of red-ripe strawberries. We also ate fresh starwberry ice cream but it didnt taste as good. Of course not, there was no sugar in it.

We also went for a little horse ride and she kept saying Yeeeh-Hawww (m pretty cow-girl)

After we reached home, I made strawberry Jam. I love strawberry Jam and there was no reason why I shouldnt try to make it at home, especially since we had hand picked strawberries.

I found a perfect jar for it too. The recipe was taken from Here: Strawberry Vanilla Bean Jam
The only alteration I had done was to skip the vanilla bean part as I didnt have any bean. It still tasted good; I am planning on canning a few more jars before the winter arrives so that I have homemade jam.

In order to know when the Jam is done and ready to be taken off the heat, here is the link: Doneness of Jam's
I used this method: Here, you stir a spoon through your jam and the remove it from the pot. Holding it over the cooking jam, watch as the remnants on the spoon drip back down. Do they fall back in runny drips, like rain on a window? If so, it’s not quite done. However, if they seem thick and run together in more of a sheet, your jam is finished.

Teaching Small Letters (Alphabets) to Toddlers

Megha loves books and so do I. We have so many books at home for her and she knows a few books by-heart :); We are having a great Sunday.

She can say and can recognize A-Z capital letters. These days I slowly started asking her what particular letters in her story book are so that she will know that words are made out of Alphabets and when we put all the words together, it makes a sentence. I dont know why it didnt occur to me to mention this to her much before. She was totally confused and didnt know what I was asking, even though she can recognize the capital letters.

I started researching a few days ago about this and came to know that many parenting websites recommend to start teaching toddlers with small letters as Capital letters make up for only 5% in any given book. But most of the alphabet books I have have started with capital letters...so confusing!

So, to make the process of teaching small letters fun, I came up with a small craft idea. Hopefully this way of teaching will make the process less "teaching" and more "fun". Lets see how this goes! I think she already knows "a" by now.

Flash Card Method:

Supplies:
Any shapes, I used butterfly foam shapes from Dollar store.
Glue
Glitter

Method: Apply the glue in the shape of an alphabet. Add glue and glitter and let it dry. I drew small figures in the corners (Apple and Ball)

Megha was very excited today. So, she applied the glitter after I applied glue :)

Edit: Its evening now and she can now say the first letters in a word (if they are capital). My smart baby! All thats needed was to show her a few times that a word is formed when we use a bunch of alphabets together :)

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to Shiv Karthik.

Miss you?

Is it really possible to miss others when they are right upstairs in the bedroom, sleeping cozy? I miss Megha today. She was up by 6 AM and had a very brief nap this morning. She went to be bed by 7:30 and I hardly spent time with her. To make up for it, I started looking at all her pictures and couldnt resist posting this! Taken on second birthday :)